The decline of the Silent Hill series into dormancy was something that was really hard to watch back on the tail end of the Xbox 360/PS3 era. At the time of its last game, Silent Hill: Downpour, it felt as if Konami had completely forgotten what the games were actu- ally about. Even if the series continued, it seemed likely that it’d be doomed to fade into just another mediocre horror series that offered players nothing more than cheap haunted house experiences.

Yet, here we are more than a decade later and not only has Konami (through Bloober Team) managed a faithful Silent Hill 2 remake, but they’ve also got a new game, Silent Hill F, on the way. Silent Hill f finally does what I think should have been done years ago: forget about the town itself and focus on the ideas that made it terrifying in the first place.

Silent Hill F takes place about as far away from the series’ namesake haunted town is it possibly can: in a sleepy Japanese village called “Ebisugaoka”. As far as we know, Ebisugaoka is just a normal town right up until Silent Hill’s iconic fog rolls in and turns it into a nightmare for the select few it’s decided to torment. I love this idea, because it transforms Silent Hill from a mere place into something more akin to a force of nature or perhaps even a state of mind. Or, perhaps, it’s returning it to that state.

One of the things that made Silent Hill work well as a setting in the first three games, is that the town was actually significant in some way to the characters that found them- selves trapped within its foggy streets and avenues. Sure, the location was haunted in a sense, but it was also clear that it was the characters (Harry Mason, Heather Mason, James Sunderland, Eddie, Angela, etc.) who were actually haunted. In other words, it was the town that was doing the haunting.

Later games had to invent ever more contrived reasons for the protagonists to wind up in Silent Hill. While the town still did its thing and haunted them, those hauntings were less personal and made it seem like these people were just unlucky enough to have stum- bled upon an evil, monster-infested, physical location. This along with overall less inter- esting characters and greater focus on things like combat made the later games a far cry from their PS2 predecessors.

The idea that the “fog world” and “other world” can show up anywhere, that they can manifest and torment anyone who deserves it (or thinks they deserve it), is so much more scary and interesting than a single haunted town. It makes it so much bigger and so much more threatening! Just imagine, now this place, this horrific kind of purgatory can strike you right where you live out of absolutely nowhere! If Silent Hill F succeeds, then possi- bilities are practically limitless! Konami and Neobards will be able to tell real character- focused stories without being tied to a location!

As for Silent Hill F and its protagonist, Hanako, there are some very interesting possibili- ties here. The first is that she’s done something terrible like James Sunderland, and is seeking to punish herself. The second is that there’s a truth she’s either unaware of or afraid to face like James and Heather Mason. There is another possibility, though.

The promotional material so far keeps talking about “seeing the beauty in terror,” and there was mention of her having to prepare herself for something. This could simply be facing a truth again, but I’m not sure. This feels different. It sounds as if she endured some sort of suffering in her life up until this event, and now she must prepare for some sort of next step. It’s definitely looking like a different kinds of story, which would make Hanako an entirely new kind of MC for the Silent Hill series on top of everything else.

If done right, this could very well be a new beginning for Silent Hill, which would be a huge relief, personally. It feels like so many legacy series have been crashing and burning in recent years that it’d be really nice to see one successfully reinvent itself. It’s also be really nice to see a major publisher reform a bit and become less cruddy for a change.

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How do you feel about Silent Hill F? Do you think the series has enough left in it to come back?

Image from the Silent Hill F Steam page